Tag Archives: Johan Kugelberg

The more your hear about the origin of Old Columbus bands, the more you realize how many of them formed accidentally, the result of spontaneity and serendipity. Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments was one such band. On a night about 20 years ago, soon after the dissolution of Ron House’s previous band, Great Plains, a band playing Stache’s ended early.

The story could have ended right there. Everyone at the bar could have just continued to get drunk and/or gone home. Instead, though, House and Girly Machine guitarist Bob Petric hopped on stage with some friends, borrowed the idle guitars and amps and started jamming on blues riffs. “We just kind of jumped up out of sheer boredom,” Petric said when I interviewed him last year. But something clicked, and they decided to do it again. And again. (Sound familiar?)

“It was kind of a fuck-off band for a couple of years where we just got together and jammed,” House said last summer. “The Columbus scene was really taking off—like the New Bomb Turks, Gaunt. So I didn’t have to do very much, just shout and scream and people would notice us locally. The whole scene was a more brutal, punkier scene. There was enough things going on that all we had to do was just go out and play and things would happen for us.” Continue reading →